Natalie Audelo

So philanthropy under this rubric is not about creating sanctuaries from or alternatives to the demands of capitalism. The benevolence, if you can call it that, is in giving people from the underclass a chance to succeed by its rules. With, of course, very patronizing and constraining surveillance from the funder. It’s neoliberal brainworms all the... See more

Floors and clothing are exemplary everyday built environments, so pervasive that we tend not to notice them. They structure our every intimate, mundane, and extraordinary encounters with our own and others’ bodies and environments.

This planet is tended by innumerable invisible hands. When progress feels undetectable, I remind myself that much of life plays out on unseen stages. We must all tend to our inner gardens, as well as the gardens that we are but one small part of. To be human today is to exist at many scales at once, stories we can grasp and ones much larger than us... See more

In French, “cultiver son jardin intérieur” means to tend to your internal garden—to take care of your mind. The garden metaphor is particularly apt: taking care of your mind involves cultivating your curiosity (the seeds), growing your knowledge (the trees), and producing new thoughts (the fruits).

We have the agency to demand better, and by doing so can begin to form a real sense of taste. Not just in a performative “I’m better than others” sense, but because crafting it can bring you personal fulfillment not defined by others, or marketing teams, or trends. By consuming more consciously and with intention , by prioritizing quality over quan... See more

At 97, Monti is animated and unstoppable. She runs Santa Maddalena as her personal passion project, accepting no applications and choosing writers according to her instincts, in consultation with her network of friends, publishers and other authors. Her taste, developed over a lifetime of nurturing and being nurtured by literature and art, is consi... See more

Things like music, books, art, family, friends, the inner life, etc. will increasingly play a larger role in quality of life (and hence progress) than gadgets and devices.

Over the next decade, the epicenter for meaningful progress will be the private lives of individuals and small communities. It will be driven by their wisdom, their core values, a... See more

It’s clear why snakes are a symbol of regeneration: their capacity to shed their skin. In humans, our old or damaged cells are constantly being replaced by new ones. In snakes, all of their cells are replaced on the same timeline, as one unit rather than independent parts. When this occurs, the snake’s outermost cuticle—its old skin—becomes a dange... See more